


The sniper with the never closing eye

by Imaginarywriter



Series: It's hard for similar arms to connect [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst?, Break Downs, Cybernetics, Fluff, Gen, Isolation, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological torture?, Sniper Lance (Voltron), Work In Progress, auditory hullicinations, hunk stands for hugs, insomnia and conditions that are related, no use of anesthesia during procedures, or are they, self inflicted torture(not the same as self inflicted injuries), shiro and lance connect, some personal headcanons i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 5,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8171188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imaginarywriter/pseuds/Imaginarywriter
Summary: He had insomnia since long before going to space. You can't be an older brother without constantly worrying. But it got worse after being lost in space. That was why he had the headphones constantly playing the sound of the ocean or rain or the sound of running water.It was funny how everything can change in an instant. Now he is just chasing the scattered strands of comfort and hoping his team will find him.(Please note that this work is being updated and having more details and chapters added to it, so do not go past chapter nine unless you want to read conflicting story lines.)





	1. Insomnia

   Insomnia- The inability to get sufficient sleep, especially when chronic.

 

   He could feel his eyes wanting to close. The constant weighing down of his eyelids by the deep black bags under his eyes and the harsh and rapid blinking that blurred his vision more than clear it. He tried to keep the dark shadows at the edges of his vision at bay. Not wanting to submit to the cruel, heartless abyss of sleep. The cold metal shackles dug into his raw skin as he reflexively tried to scrub at his eyes with the back of his hand. He scowled up at the objects that were keeping him from rubbing his eyes, and he hated the only reason his captors had for putting him in shackles. Which was their disturbing interest in his eyes. Their "compliments" always made him stiffen and their nickname for him curdled the small amount of food he had in his stomach.

   Sky eyes.

   It normally wouldn't have been a bad nickname, actually one of his better ones- but the way they would say it. Their lips curving into callous smiles, their eyes reflecting detached regard- it made him curl tighter around himself.

   His team,  _his family_ had warned him, though they always had treasuring affection in their tones or scolding remarks. The sound of moving metal drew his drooping eyes to the door of his cell and he barely reacted at the harsh forms of his captors. They marched to him, unlocked his shackles, and unforgivingly jerked him up until he was standing.

   How he hoped his team would come soon, he hoped they would find him and save him from this painful nightmare, and hug him and sooth him and tell him that  _it was okay_ , because they would help him.

   But he knew that not a caring creature would hear the retching and screams and groans and the deathly whispers as his captors took him apart and then put him back together.

   Over and over and over again. Never stopping with their inhumane prodding as they tore apart his muscles and ground his bones and stretched his skin. He could feel everything. Everything that was touched. Everything that was removed. Everything that was replaced. And now he can't sleep, not with the memories and he needed to watch for a sign from his team. Anything. 

   He hoped that his family would still love him when they got someone different back.


	2. Head held high

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His head was always up, scanning, watching.
> 
> Proud.

   His head was held high for longer than the others. He made sure of it. Others would bend their heads away, not making eye contact with the sneering, unblinking gazes that tracked them as they moved.

   He had been moved, relocated, countless times. Never one cold, hard stone was layed on thrice times by him. And the clockwork clicking of boots would round by his door often- the movable steel slot sliding back and a pair of luminescent, yellow eyes would rove the dark cell until stopping at his form. And then they would move on, and the rhythmic clicking would follow until the next pair of yellow slits peered in.

   And, he guessed, it was obvious they would stop moving him. He had slept 48 guard cycles, (clicking every two hours), and his mind wandered to the question on whether he should pay attention to this. 

   A guard gave him the answer.

   And he found that there was a cruel, cold reason for heads to never to be held high.

   "My, what beautiful eyes you have,  _sky eyes."_


	3. insomnolence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If only he was able to sleep now, but he knows that there just ain't no rest for the wicked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh... chapter two! And yes in the chapter summary that is a line to a song. But lets get to the story, shall we.

   Insomnolence- sleeplessness.

 

   He tossed and turned, phantom pains in his left eye making him cry out. Sleep eluded him now, even when he wanted it. Its presence was always there, never stopping its ruthless taunting of him as he fought against his shackles to scratch at the left side of his face. He wanted to take it out, whatever they had taken out and put back in was not right. It was cold, hard and didn't match the other side of his face. The eye was wrong. The eye shouldn't be there. He wanted it out. He  _needed_ it out. And he fought, jerking his hands downward leaving scraping gashes at his wrists. But this didn't halt him- he didn't even notice it.

   He knew what they did, he  _knew_ what they had taken. He had _felt_ it. 

    _He had felt every damnable second._

   He wasn't "Sky eyes", they had make sure to take that name from him. And he now knew what happens when they give a name to their experiments. They take that from them and replace it with something horrific. As if it was a game and they were the players making a character and dictating everything it does. As if they were a pernicious author and set a cruel fate for all the unfortunate people created in their story. 

   The shackles clanked again and he heard the tell tale sound of his cell door opening and the clanking of boots. Then hands were grabbing him forcing him to stop. Taking of his shackles and replacing them with something else, something more all encompassing around his hands and feet. Forcing him down and a pinprick on the skin of his arm.

   And then his vision went black. The abyss of pain swirled around him like a riptide, carrying him into an ocean of nightmares. Then nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please like, or comment, or whatever this website uses to have you show that you like this story. And next time you read a story, just think of a character that dies and think about how they would of felt. Or y'know happy thoughts.


	4. Distorted vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wasn't very adept at this.  
> Everything was distorted.

  He didn't like the times when lights were out. He didn't like it when the lights were on. But at least....

   At least he didn't have to know when lights were on. Didn't have to  _see_. But nothing ever went the way anyone wanted.

   Especially not for him.

   Especially not then.

   Especially when it  _mattered_.

   Never when it mattered. And now he preferred to not stand, his vision was blurry- a flush of fuzzy pastels, he preferred not to drift in the dark tides of rest- times before crept around his eye.

   But, he preferred many things. Many- many softer and transcendent things. Though he now preferred quieter ideas over those too.

   Yes. 

   He preferred much simpler ideas and worries and thoughts and tastes and sound and sights and many-  _many_ things.

   But, when did anyone ask him of those. 

   Maybe he would reminisce with his family, his team; about much more simplistic things.


	5. Athazagoraphobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They would come get him right? They hadn't forgotten him, had they?   
> He hoped he wouldn't forget them, but why should he remember if they had left him?

   Athazagoraphobia- The fear of being forgotten or ignored and fear of forgetting.

 

   His fingers fluttered in their cages, straining to stretch and move. They popped and tapped against the metal surrounding them and he grit his teeth every time they did. Though he soon forgot it soon and shifted his gaze to the door. 

   Maybe, just  _maybe_ if he imagined his team busting through that hulking piece of metal, it would ease the pain in his chest. If he imagined flashes of green and yellow and red and black, he wouldn't ache so much. But it only served to make it worse. So much  _worse_.

   "Have they forgotten me?" Was now a steady thing in his mind. The only thing grounding him. The only thing he could hold on to. And it  _scared_ him to know the answer to that small question. A simple and single word answer. The one thing that could break him. The only thing that could lift him. But it clawed at him. Forming a pit in his chest and sucking out every detail in the world. Until only that four word question remained.

   "Have they forgotten me?" It truly was, a horrifying prospect now.

   But, what if he was at fault. What if he had forgotten. What if  _he_ was the one who couldn't remember the smiles of the colors red, yellow, green, and black. What if he was the one who couldn't remember the feeling of flight and laughter, of childish banter and someone having your back. It all hurt- his bones, his muscles, his lungs, his eye, his  _heart_. He curled around himself and let his sorrow sail him into a fitful sleep


	6. Pieces of those before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The writing on the walls and the dents on the floor are the only things left- of those before.

   A fact that he noted frequently were the family relations he often saw. 

   Children being cradled.

   Elderly being soothed by their younger counterparts.

   Sisters and brothers laughing mirthlessly, as they huddled together.

   Husbands and wives comforting each other with chaste brushing of lips and comforts spoken by eye contact.

   It would appear thoughtful, kind even- if only it weren't so torturous.

   He mourned for those who lost one another- and themselves. Pitted against one another. Never did two survive. And when one disappeared, the others quickly followed.

   In the game, there were no victors, no losers. Just fat cats gorged on entertainment that the mice did not willingly give. He honestly pitied those with family, but also pitied those with none.

   No winners.

   No losers.

   Though, those with family at least knew they all cared for each other to the end- even if it was muddled by the sinking quicksand and grating desert sands of the cold walls and yellow gazes around them.

   But, he still pitied those with family more than the others.

   Bonds wouldn't last- not here.

   The scratches of alien numerals and scrawls on the walls were testimonies to that. The dented and stained floors were records of them. 

   To those that lost one another.

   To those who forgot themselves.

   To those before.


	7. Somniphobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His ears rang and itched and the dreams just wouldn't leave him alone.

   Somniphobia- The fear of sleep.

 

   He didn't want it, he shouldn't need it. It wasted his time, he had to find a way out. Their guards were slipping and they were getting complacent. Slipping up, he could hear it in how they moved past his cell, how they checked on him, how they interacted with the other guards at the other cells. He could hear their breathing and the pumping of their blood. He moved his wrist upwards towards his ear, before placing it down. His captors had removed the containers of his hands and had replaced them by putting them on his feet and he grimaced at the feeling. His muscles begged him to lay down and close his eyes. But he wouldn't. It was a waste of time. He wouldn't allow himself to sleep. Neither would the memories. 

   He was more afraid of the monsters in his dreams. The monsters made of needles and knives with smiles of green, yellow, red, and black.

   He was afraid of the men outside his dreams that would prick him and slash him and cut him and laugh at him.

   The roar of cheering above him drew out a grimace on his face, he would be called next. And sleep would distract him from this. His fingers tapped the metal ground, making a metal on metal sound.

   Sleep was a necessity, he knows this, but it scared him to do so. It scared him more than anything and he had seen many things.  _Many, many things._ The door to his cell opened and his guard stepped in with the keys jingling in his hand. The shackles on his feet were removed and he was pushed all the way to a huge colosseum with a roaring crowd. The noise made him grunt and he moved his hands to his ears letting their tips brush his ear. The creature on the opposite side of the arena scared him. He was scared of what the creature could do to him and what it _would_ do to him. 

   But he was more afraid of the sleep that would force itself on him after this. Because it wanted him to break.

    _Everything and  everyone just wanted him to **break**. Break. Break until there was nothing left for anyone to find._


	8. less to hear

   He twisted his body around a pillar, escaping the claws that wracked across the air behind his back. His breathing was heavy and his muscles screamed- but he ignored these things and ducked behind a low wall. The cracking of stone, sent shivers running across his body and he thanked his judgment for telling him it was safer to change positions again. Peering behind the rock he was behind, he spotted the large beast at the other end of the large dome- its attention having been caught by the overly excited spectators and the guards trying to prod it back over towards him. He licked his lips and quickly scrambled up a near by pillar, heaving himself up the ledge.

   Here he would have the advantage. Most of the crowd was now eye level with him, but the pillar was in the center of the arena. Breathing in deeply, he laid down his stomach- his fingertips grazing his ear. Now he had a clear shot at the behemoth below him as he stared down at it from his scope, focusing on its heart beat and its footsteps. The beast turned around- it easily resembled one of the creatures from his scarce dreams. His eyes glinted as the lights turned off in the arena- a mechanism designed to tell the prisoners that they had spent to long and if one of them wasn't dead by the time the lights were back on, one of them would be randomly shot.

   He knew he wouldn't be the one to get shot. His one eye glowed a swirling arctic blue- and the match was decided.

   A worm of guilt squirmed in his heart- but he ignored it as he was lead to the holding pin for the prisoners. All the prisoners shied away from him, eyes wearily connecting with his glowing eye. The eye he hated with every fiber of his being. His fingers padded and clicked against the metal floors. The roars and the screams making him grimace and bring his fingertips up to run across his ear. He wished he had someone there for him. Someone to walk up to his side and talk to him or wrap an arm around his shoulder or mush his hair after he did some thing particularly dumb or just send him a playful smirk. He wished there was someone.

   And he found no better comfort in his dreams when sleep knocked him unconscious- though in his dreams, there was less to hear. 


	9. When the time comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When they came, he barely recognized them.

   They had come! 

   They had finally come!

   He could hear the pops of gunfire and grunts of pain. The clicking of the guards and escaping scientists boots came and went quickly. He rubbed his aching shoulder and moved closer to the door. His breathing was feather light and he watched through the slit at the top of his cell door until there was no one running by. Then he slammed his shoulder against the door, making an echoing, clanking noise. He rammed into it until it jerked open and with out thinking of which way to go, he just ran a random direction- ignoring the straining of his still aching shoulder. His feet pounded silently on the cold unfamiliar floors, as his surroundings swirled by.

   A blur of red passed by, but all he saw was the dripping red snarl of a hulking beast while deafening laughter and cheers enclosed around him. "Lance?"

   He sprinted past an open door with a dot of green, his mind showed him only the image of a toxic liquid in a thin vile. "Lance!"

   He jumped down a flight of stairs and barreled past a hulking blob of yellow, but it only spurred him quicker because there was only the sneering yellow eyes and the sickening watery-yellow of bile. "L-lance?"

   The hallway opened up into a large room with a hallway leading out of it to the right and out of that hallway jogged out a black shadow, when it saw him, its speed increased. "Wait!"

   He wouldn't. He couldn't. The nightmares, the memories would catch him. They would chew him up, spit him out, and drag him back into the house of torture. But he had made it out and nothing could make him go back. The footsteps behind him increased in numbers and he could hear four different ragged breaths. They had only come to torture him more. He would never go back, never. He would rather  _die._ He ducked into a thin hallway, and he started to recognize where he was heading.

   The coliseum stretched out before him, only bringing snarling memories. The rubble and the sickening red from the last fight was still there. He hated it when they had red instead of another color. He ran towards a pile of rubble and scaled it to the top, still running towards the opposite end of the arena.   

   As he came upon the wall, he noticed a pile of rubble about three feet taller than him. The blurs of yellow, red, and green were already bent over and panting from what he could tell, but the shadow was still sprinting towards him.

   That left one option.

   He plowed towards the rubble and when he was about a foot away, he launched himself at the pile of rock, scaling it quickly and latched onto the ledge of the arena's wall. Heaving himself up it and collapsing for a short while. His eyes peered back over the ledge, and he say the faces of red, yellow, and green gawk at him.

   But he quickly stumbled back as the black shadow heaved himself up the wall right in front of him. His feet stumbled to get up and tripped in their hurry to just  _run._

   A weight pinning him on his back made him jerk his eyes up and reflexively shoot his hands up and latch onto the area were the shadow's arm met his shoulder and press down, his other hand shooting up to latch on to the exposed throat.

   "Stop." That one word brought his eye up to meet the others pastel grey eyes and halt his arms pressure on the shadow's shoulder and its rapid movement towards its neck. It was then that recognized who it was.

   "Ssssss-shhhhhhhh-iiiiirrrrrrrrr-o... oooooo?" The eyes gazing at his own in awe softened and moisture started to collect in them, before water dropped onto his face and he was pulled into a pair of strong arms.

   "Yeah, it's me Lance." 

   A smile started to form on Lance's face as Shiro gazed at him, but a hand at his neck stopped him. 

   He was heaved upwards in a harsh grip and his eye met glowing yellow, as he was dragged away from Shiro.

   He hadn't been saved.


	10. it was much harder, until there was no remorse

   The arena was now rarely seen by him. 

   But he wished it wasn't.

   He soon realized that the arena, at some point, had become a way to keep his demons at bay. It was twisted and he wanted to believe it hadn't been like that.

   But, it had and he realized this after he curled himself in a knot in the corner of his cell. The creatures hadn't left him alone since his tried escape, they mocked him and laughed at his pain. they wore the masks of his most dear colors. They snarled at him and dug their ways through his bones and muscles. Seizing grips on his heart and mind, and tearing them apart, one piece at a time. 

   It didn't matter whether he was awake or not, they always found him. They chased him and beat him. Stripped of his skin and tore out his bones. Their voices were eerie, nothing but whispers as they prodded him closer to the harsh hands of death. He had lost count of the days, he gave up on counting the rhythmic clicking of the guard's boots. He had given up on doing most things.

   His cell's door open and a guard walked in. He jingled the keys to his cuffs in front of his face- and when he was free, he didn't need to be lead to the arena. 

  And he felt no remorse.


	11. Silence

   He had found that the world of silence was the best place to be. He didn't need that form of sense. He sat in isolation cells in silence. Group cells, silence. The arena, silence. Operation rooms, silent.

   Everything was silent.


	12. Silence to the prayers he sent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He moved past his love of sound and fell in love with a mistress named silence.

   He was moved again.

   He was used to this.

   He stopped paying attention to  _what_ he fought in the arenas he was in. His attention was more on when he fought them. There was an increase in the blood that was shed around him. More vicious cycles that worked around in his mind. 

   He never looked his demons in the eye, too soon would they swallow him if he did not avoid that contact. He never listened to their snarls and high- keening laughs, he always kept that down. The ache in his mind that begs to rejoice in sounds had betrayed him one too many. He never speaks to them, their lies etched in every enunciation they possessed. His silence is sworn to himself and the vow he took within his own silence speaks more volumes than his own words.

   He remains silent through everything. To weary to care for those he used to pity. His prayers remain unspoken and left to gather dust.

   His silence is the prayers he can't speak of.


	13. Booming into utterances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is gone.

   The loud noises make him brush his fingertips pasted his ears. An ignorant silence falls around him and he rests his head back on the cold metal of the wall. They hum with his own warmth and from the sounds above. He hears the muffled foot falls and shouts, but he can't bring himself to care for them.

   A rushed jingle that he recognizes comes from outside his cell walls and he moves to the door. A clawed hand drags him out and he feels the cold embrace of metal around his wrists, tethering his hands together. He is swiftly led passed the other cells of pitifully writhing and moaning bodies of those who weren't strong. He feels nothing for them anymore.

   He got attached too many times.

   He still has scars on his back.

   The guard guides him down stretching corridors that remind him of the mazes he used to walk in his dreams. His mind recognizes the path that his is led down. Maybe the booming was from his new opponent. The guard sharply turns and he finds in a detached sense that he is staring down the maws of the things he has been dreading. They look just like them, but he knows better.

   They own their voices, their looks, their eyes.

   One of them draws the other's attention to him and the guard, and he realizes that the guard is willing enough to give him to his own demons. He wasn't willing.

   Their colors shout something at him as he grips the guards head. He isn't able to hold it in his hand in the next moment. Their colors stare at him, he almost laughs at red for the irony that covers (not)hand. They lurch towards him and he runs down the opposite, familiar path. He hears their overly loud footsteps run for him. He leads them far, deeper and deeper to the belly of the beast from his own making. The familiar walls fall away to a familiar clearing and he sees a cluster of sneering yellow eyes. They shout and move his way as he skirts to the walls and the colors stop in the door he left.

   He's allowed to fight here. He knows he will not be punished here. They bring him here for what he does.

   He loses sight of the colors as he focuses on the yellow eyes. They crunch under his feet. Sears of black mare dark metallic grays. This time he does laugh at the irony of red on him. He turns back at the colors, still in the door. He focuses his cold gaze on the one in front. A smile curls his face up and black is in front of him and blocks his vision as he tumbles down.


	14. Waking up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He woke up to a hug.

   Arms were wrapped around him. He jerked, trying to get away. The feeling of being held down and pinpricks dotting his skin dried his mouth. Finally the weight moved and he sat up, drew his legs to his chest, and wrapped shaking arms around his knees. His frame unconsciously shook, his breathing heaving in and out. In and out. In and out. Fingers brushed his forearm, making him flinch and jam his eye shut.

   "Hey, it's okay." The voice cooed. He chanced a look up, and the sunny color of yellow greeted him genially. Hunk.

   "H-hey." His voice cracked, and he watched Hunk grimace before smiling jovially.

   "How are you feeling?"

   "Like Pidge after a week with no tech." Hunk laughed, and a wide smile spread across his face. The feeling now foreign, but welcome. They talked for a while longer and it was like the time before. That was until he started coughing. As soon as it started, Hunk ran out to go grab some water. The cough stopped a couple of moments after Hunk had left the room. Lance decided that he could take this quiet moment to take in his surroundings. The other paladins seemed to have decided that putting him in his old room would be good. Probably for the familiar enviroment. His hastily strewn laundry littered the floors, the alien books he had picked up to try and learn the languages, and items he used to use for entertainment were all in the places the were in before. His team probably couldn't bring themselves to clean his room. They could have just cleaned his stuff out, thrown it out, found a new blue paladin.

   His stomach twisted.

   Maybe that would of been better. He was  _broken_ now. He wasn't _him._ His fingers twitched and he raised his  _right arm._ But it wasn't actually his arm. It was the Galra's. Just like his left eye. They weren't  _him._  

   At some point he had started to scratch at his eye. The old feeling of  _needing_ it out  _now_ resurfaced.

   "Hey, Lance, stop okay- you're fine, we're here, you're not in that cell anymore." Hunk had rushed in soon after he started scratching his eye, and had quickly grabbed his wrists to make him stop- before pulling him into a bear hug. Lance choked a sob into Hunk's chest. They sat there, him crying on Hunk's shoulder while the other man rubbed soothing patterns in his back. Lance fell into the first peaceful sleep he had had in months.

   He woke up several hours later, Hunk was gone, presumably to be trying to give him some space. A sigh was the only noise that was made and he fidgeted from the too quiet space. Spotting his headphones, Lance shifted so his legs hung off the edge of the bed, and he shakily rose to his feet. He made it about halfway before his ungodly amounts of exhaustion caught up to him. His body tucked and he waited for impact. But it never came.

   An arm caught him and lifted him up right, but positioned his body so he was leaning on the torso of the person who caught him. They walked him back to his bed, before they swiftly grabbing his headphones.

   "You were wanting these, right?" He nodded and they set them down next to him while they sat down at the edge of his bed. Shiro awkwardly sat there, his back stiff and his metal arm twitching towards him softly. He made a choked noise.

   "I... I'm so sorry Lance, no one,  _no one_ should go through that, and- and if only I had been more vigilant, I could have saved you, you wouldn't have had to do want you did- I should have-"

   "Shiro," Lance reached up and firmly held Shiro's shoulder, catching his gaze and holding it, "it wasn't your fault." Shiro made another choked sound before grabbing Lance's metal hand with his own.

   "I know." Lance was pulled into another hug, but this time his was the shoulder being cried. He moved his hand past his fingertips across his ear and listened intently to the other's heartbeat as it loudly pulsed in Shiro's chest.

   "It's okay we're both here, I'm hear thanks to you, we both made it." The headphones lay forgotten.


	15. The writing crawls under his skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can't read it, but he still knows what it means.

   He was most often looking out of one of the windows, staring of into literal space. Shiro or Hunk would most often join him, Pidge seemed to join him when she was having trouble with a project or needed someone to talk to, and Keith- Keith just seemed to sometimes stop him in the hall or living area with a look of guilt and his mouth opening and closing like he wanted to say something before sprinting away. But, right now it seemed that everyone had converged in one area, Hunk had baked a batch of muffins and He, Lance, Pidge, and Shiro were all on the floor picking the muffins off the plate. Lance had Pidge leaning her back into his right arm and holding his hand, it seemed that the paladins took it upon themselves to make sure he knew that it was still  _him_ and they did this in the form of contact, while Hunk was on his left. Shiro sat across from them, his legs stretched in front of him while he leaned back on the front of the sofa so he legs could bump Lance's. Keith was no where to be seen.

   "So, they seem to take the dominant arm, since they replaced my right arm." 

   "No, I think they do it based on what they have planned for the subject, since they took Lance's right arm." Pidge squeezed Lance's metal hand minutely as she pointed this out, and he nodded his head in agreement.

   "Yeah, they did everything a specific way- I," he suddenly choked as the memories came back with a vengeance, "sa- saw i- it on one of their, uhm, diagrams." His voice was quiet and the other paladins seemed to somehow scoot themselves closer to him, giving him more warm, and sweet reassurance that he _wasn't_ there anymore. They sat still as Lance waited for his heart and breathing to slow to a normal rate.

   "So, um, Pidge what projects are you working on?" He felt Pidge straiten up and shuffle some of the papers she had in her lap to the floor so the others could see. Only Shiro caught what he did and he gave Lance a meaningful look.

   "-these are some of the blueprints and work notes that I got from the Galra ship you were on, I've only look at the first blueprint I grabbed and nothing else- but it was worth it! This blueprint is for a proposed weapon prototype that can move between forms of a small item like a ring or necklace to a undetectable weapon, so I-" Lance tried to focus on the rest of what Pidge was saying, but couldn't. One of the words on most of the sheets caught his eye. It was a small word, that looked harmless and none of them cold read it- but he knew what it stood for.

   His mind shook him with the pictures of red flesh being pulled back, exposing the insides of a human body he knew well, the feeling of tips jabbing into him and cold metal whipping his skin. He knew what it stood for, seen it on enough of the Galra scientists' "lab reports".

    _Human testing. Torture. Pain._   _Blood_. 

 Swiftly, he jerked his arm from Pidge's hand, surprising everyone around him as he grabbed all the papers with that- that  _vile_ word and instantly burned them to a crisp with a flash of sapphire blue from the arm that wasn't his. No one moved except for him, as his leg's raised him up until he was standing stiffly. Lance stared down at them with the eye that never actually closed, it's burning blue iris making them hold their breaths and wait for Lance to do something drastic.

   Lance left the room in a flash. It was a moment before the others followed hastily.

   The muffins lay cold and forgotten, no one saw Keith, with a sorrowful look in his eyes, leave the room quietly. 


	16. If hugs were the answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If hugs could heal, he would be more than good.

   A common thing now, that Lance had observed, was that his team most often fell asleep in a pile on the sofa. And, more often than not he was in the middle of the pile or was some how in contact with everyone of the paladins, like now.

   Shiro had his own metal hand brushing against Lance's; telling him that it was still  _him_ _._  

   Hunk was mainly his cushion, Lance often splaying or leaning on him with one of Hunk's arms around him; grounding him, because he was  _here._

   Pidge was some how always poking or jabbing him with her toes or elbows; showing him that he was still  _human._

   Keith just seemed to lean on him, he didn't do anything special, but his presence was always there; trusting him and supporting him, because they were his  _family._

   But he never slept with them. He couldn't. _He_  didn't trust himself enough to sleep around them. So he would slip away to the observation deck. There he would either gaze unblinkingly at the stars or call up the map of celestial bodies and adjust it until he found the earth. Lance spent many hours there, alone. And he never actually saw what he was looking at, his thoughts would storm in the quiet of the room until he had the castle's speakers play the sound of crashing water. But he still never slept. Though there were times that someone would join him and just sit quietly next to him, bumping there knees together or placing a hand on his. It was Shiro this time.

   Lance leaned against him, resting his head on Shiro's broad shoulders, and fluttering his finger tips against his ear before twining the metal fingers of his hand with Shiro's.

   "I'm still  _me_ , still  _human,_ still  _alive._ " He tightened his hold on Shiro's metal hand.

   "Yes Lance, you're here with me and i'm here with you."


	17. Auditory hallucinations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He couldn't, he wouldn't listen to them.

   Auditory hallucinations- Hearing noises that only you can hear; hearing voices.

 

   The whispers had begun at some point. Uttering quiet sins in his ears. Urging him to their will. But he couldn't do the commands they gave him, he wouldn't. 

   At some point, they had become a roar. The cacophony of voices piercing his ears and head. Inducing seizuring migraines for hours. He moved his hands to his ears and thanked everything that he couldn't hear anything.

   But, they came back. Quiet little words. Minor sins. Urging him on and on. Do it. Do it. But he wouldn't, he couldn't.

   His team, the colors yellow, green, red, and the black shadow were here for him.

   But he yearned for the whispers to go. And to hear no more sweet, little sins. The whispers wanted him to do vile things, bad things- but he wouldn't.

_Kill._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the end.  
> I'm thinking of putting out a story for before lance's capture and what the team did during it.  
> I hoped you enjoyed.


End file.
